Judith Flanders

Not perfect freedom

‘Servants’ and ‘service’ have not always meant ‘servility’.

issue 02 January 2010

‘Servants’ and ‘service’ have not always meant ‘servility’.

‘Servants’ and ‘service’ have not always meant ‘servility’. From the Middle Ages right through to the 16th century, everyone was servant to someone: a lord was servant to the king, a lesser lord to a greater. Children likewise served in the households of their parents’ equals: service was what one did before God, and before one’s superiors, in class, or age. And many servants were for display as much as utility: as the consumer durables of their time, their number gave their masters’ prosperity in physical form.

Gradually, as the world of family and servants became less closely entwined (by the end of the 18th century, ‘family’ meant ‘kin’, not merely all those who lived under one roof), servants became those who performed menial and unpleasant tasks.

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